High Altitude Airways Suck...

[chomp_rock]

Not to mention the yellow line puts you over land for most of the flight, if something goes wrong you can make an emergency landing instead of ditching.

[beaky]

You were the captain of a 747 and wern't upstairs in the first place!  :o crikey. LOL

 I don't get it.
 By "upstairs" I mean to a higher altitude... the first hour or so of this flight, ATC was clearing me to 8,000, then 14,000, then 25,000, etc. So far I'd get the word to go higher just as the AP was settling the plane at the last-assigned altitude...
I wasn't talking about going back to the lounge, although with nothing to do but sit looking at clouds and water, I might let the AP mind the store and do just that. Too bad there's no virtual cabi in this model...

[Ridge_Runner_5]

When I flew Concorde flights from London to New York, it would first take me south to Northern Africa, then turn northwest...seemed much more economical to go the northern route if it wanted to be near a waypoint all the time..

[jb2_86_uk]

[quote]

[Hagar]

When I flew Concorde flights from London to New York, it would first take me south to Northern Africa, then turn northwest...seemed much more economical to go the northern route if it wanted to be near a waypoint all the time..

Not sure about Concorde but I've flown to Newark & JFK several times, either from Gatwick or Heathrow. They seem to fly west along the south coast of England before changing course & passing the south coast of Ireland. I imagine it's a smaller version of the yellow line on the image I posted.

I often see the early flight from the US flying along here before landing at Gatwick (I live on the south coast of England). I know this as I've done the same on my return from NYC - or maybe it was Orlando.

[Gary R.]

Okay,there is one infallible way to plot the shortest great circle route. Dpwnload CIVA.  Study on how to use it. Definatly use the upper right screw on the MSU unless you wanna sit on the ramp for a 1/2 hour waiting for the darn thing to align.  Then, find a globe.  stretch a string from yer origin to destination, select recognizable co-ordinates along that line.  Find those co-ordinates in MS flight planner or any other flight planner for that matter and enter them into you INS route.  That's it. INS can't help but fly the great circle.  Of course, MSFS being not a truly round world might vary from the real thing but I've discovered while comparing an INS route with the direct to magenta on the gps that the INS routing is often a considerable amount of degrees off set from the gps direct.  So, which one is correct?  Simple.  The distance and ETA reading tells the story.  INS wins.

[MattNW]

Very good. In hindsight my reference to aiming at the moon was not the best example & gave Commoner the wrong idea.

Actually aiming at the Moon isn't necessary. Once you are in the correct orbital plane and if you time it right all you do is increase your velocity until your orbit and the Moon's intersect. No aiming to it.

But the atmosphere moves with the planet - if it didnt then we would be constantly barraged with a 465.4 ms-1 (mach 1.4) wind blowing from the east!!!! which we obviously dont! (imagin having that as a tailwind) therefore the destination's position does not alter! also think about it - if that was so, how would a helicopter hover!?

John

This is only partially true. The atmosphere does lag somewhat. That's what accounts for much of our weather and especially the differences between northern hemisphere weather patterns and southern ones.